My bus route covers thirty miles. They call it the West Fields Route. Nephi is a town of about 3000 people. The amount of space that Nephi covers would hold 20,000 or more in a bigger city. Still there are people who like more space and live west of town out in the fields. On a couple of roads, out in the middle of nowhere, there is suddenly a row of houses all on the same side that look like a neighborhood in the town. Mostly the houses are far apart, separated by fields and pasture. There are children growing up out there that need to get to the schools in the city. Each morning I take my forty-foot bus and collect them. Each night I bring them back.

Every bus route has its nuances. In the morning mine starts with a girl standing by herself in the dark. In the winter she is typically standing on top of a pile of snow the snow plows have left. I teased her once about being queen of the hill. She is a middle-schooler. Mostly they don’t talk to their bus driver, but this girl is friendly. When I called her queen of the hill, she stopped and considered it. She smiled and said, “Yes, I am.” One morning she stopped by my seat to show me pictures of the moon she had taken on her school iPad. The moon was full that morning and setting in the West. “Cool,” I said. Then I watched as she made her way down the narrow aisle to the last seat on the driver’s side—her skinny form a silhouette against the back window. She often reminds me not to start rolling until she gets to her seat.

The roads are narrow out in the west fields. They make odd, unexpected turns as they adjust for property lines. On one intersection the front end of my bus swings out over a ditch on the far side of the road while my rear duals clip the corner of another ditch on the near side. Not too much later the road turns ninety degrees to the right. Eighty feet later it turns back ninety degrees to the left. Sometimes I will meet a farmer’s truck carrying hay there. One of us has to wait for the other to negotiate the turns. There is always a friendly wave. The funny part of this route is that after picking up the kids on this road I drive to a lonely intersection where there are no homes or traffic, do a three point turn, and go back the way I came. This is the only practical way to get to the other kids.

There are three stops where just one house sites off the narrow road far down an even narrower lane. The kids at these houses have to be brought up to the road to catch the bus. Some mornings they are late. As I approach the corner I will see headlights swing out from the driveway and then a plume of dust as the car speeds up the lane hoping that I don’t pass by. I turn on my yellow flashers to let them know I see them.

There is a dairy on my route far out on the west side up on the hill. Several houses were built for the families who work at the dairy. The houses sit further back and up higher on the hill. I can see them from miles away as I make my way across the valley. I’m sure they can see me, too. I look for taillights in the driveway at one of the houses. This car is often late to drop off point down at the dairy. When I see the taillights I can envision the harried mom trying to hurry the three kids to the car so they don’t miss the bus. They missed it once and she followed me five miles to the next stop.

At one point I turn onto the airport road. The stretch is three miles long. There is only one house in that length and I don’t stop there. There are cow pastures on the right and further down the road on the left sits the quiet, little airport with its lone green and white light rotating atop a striped pole. One day we passed three bald eagles sitting out in a field. Another day a red fox with its bushy tail ran across the road in front of me. I have to take this road so that I can turn right where it Ts off, go down a field length, and then turn onto another road and go back two miles the way I came. It’s the only way to get to another line of houses on the way back to town. One morning four kids came running out of one home. Three of them slipped and fell on ice covered by a skiff of snow. One of them fell twice. They were okay and got on the bus grinning sheepishly.

Two little seven-year-old girls sit on the seat right behind me. Both are cute as buttons. Both have a lot of energy. At the high school one of these girls hopped over to the seat by the door and touched each student on the head as they came up the stairs. Most ignored her. A few gave her the evil eye. She didn’t seem to mind. At times I will be driving a long and suddenly I will hear in my left ear, “Bus driver! Bus Driver!” One of these girls has stuck her head between my seat and the window to talk to me. Her face is so close to mine I can feel her breath on my cheek. This is a little disconcerting. I have to scold her back to her seat.

Some of the kids are on the bus for over an hour. Twice now a third-grade girl has called to me, “Could you hurry? My little brother has to poop.” I can only hurry so fast while keeping it safe. My bus is a new bus with the padded, high-back seats. The seats are a safety feature. The problem is the kids can’t see over them so they stand up or hang out into the aisles so they can talk with the other kids. It’s a constant battle for the bus driver to keep the kids down in their seats for the duration of the ride. One day I noticed a middle-school girl leaning across the aisle to show a friend something on her phone.  Using the intercom I called her back to her seat. Our eyes met through the rear-view mirror. Hers told me very clearly that she couldn’t believe she had to put up with this.

My last stop in the mornings is in town. There are about fifteen kids who get on at the church parking lot. Some of the kids will still be walking to the stop when I turn the corner. When they see me they break into a run. Sometimes I will honk the air horn for their pleasure and mine and to hurry them along. The other kids are sliding on the ice in the parking lot or playing with bouncy balls. One cold morning they told me excitedly that they had been trying to build a fire to stay warm. I looked where they had been huddled together on the sidewalk. There were no signs of a failed fire. It made me wonder, though.

Every day those thirty miles are an adventure. Some days the bus feels happy. Other days the stress level is higher. Each child is an ingredient, but even though the ingredients stay the same the recipe never produces the same results on any given day. There is only one thing that is the same every day—the quiet after the last child has steps off the bus. This quiet would be sadder than the relief it is except for the knowledge that tomorrow we are going to do it again.